What if
by Magnolie
Summary: Tony has done some thinking about the fact that if Kate hadn't died, things between him and Ziva would never have worked out as they do now - takes place sometime after 'Life before his eyes' and somehow includes the not-filmed/deleted scene with Tony and Ziva from that episode; TIVA


**What if**

Working Title: Traces in the Sand

_Authore's note: I haven't really had time to watch NCIS during the last two years.  
I kept myself up to date by watching the Team and Tiva Scenes on youtube but I missed out on watching all the cases and episodes.  
Well – here I am – I'm slightly sick and tomorrow is my interview for a program called 'Harvard National Model United Nations' and I tried to stay in bed today, catching up by watching almost two seasons of NCIS.  
I was SO dissatisfied when I saw the 200__th__ episode! I mean it was okay but come on! The 100__th__ was better that this. And then they cut out the best scene with Ziva and Tony.  
That was when I thought: You gotta make something out of this.  
So writing this is gonna by my therapy for tomorrow. Enjoy!_

* * *

He knew someone had intruded his home as soon as he entered the living room area.  
Gibbs carefully placed his groceries on the kitchen table and looked around. Light was burning in the hallway to his basement.  
He closed the door and made out a coat, hanging from one of the hooks in the floor. The coat was dripping water on the floor although it had already stopped raining about half an hour ago. He must have already been here for a while. Gibbs smiled. He couldn't recall the last time he saw him being that patient. Only a second after that he signed - that couldn't mean anything too good.

He took off his wet shoes and jacket before he went downstairs to see what Tony could possibly want from him at this night time. He found him sitting in a chair in front of his table, looking down at something but lifted his face as soon as he heard his boss coming down the stairs.

Without asking, Gibbs took two of the canning jars and a bottle of bourbon and placed them on the table between them. He also took a chair on which he sat down before pouring the bourbon in and putting the bottle of bourbon aside again.

They stayed silent for a while. Tony looked down at what Gibbs now made out as a photograph. But from the angle in which he was sitting he couldn't tell who had been captured in it.

"Are you gonna tell me why you walked here in the middle of the night in a hell of a rain?" he finally asked Tony and took a sip of the bourbon.

"I've done some thinking, boss." He said and looked him in the eyes.

"You have?"

"Yes. I mean – serious… thinking." He scratched the back of his head and turned the photograph around so it was laying face down on the table.

"And..?" Gibbs asked again.

"Ever since that day you were shot by that boy – or the day Franks died - or any other shooting that has happened lately. Every time when it's just us walking on the thin line, every next movement meaning death…" Tony looked around in the gloomy light of the basement.

"Do you want an office job?"

"No, that's not what I mean."

"DiNozzo spit it out I don't want to sit here all night with you beating around the bush." Gibbs signed again and put the glass back on the table.

"Do you remember the day Kate died? She died because we all stood up. If we'd stayed down, Ari wouldn't have had the chance to kill her, ore either one of us."

"Tony, it's been more than six years now, no one is blaming you."

"You still don't get what I mean." He said slightly angry before putting his face in his hands and running his fingers through his hair several times.

"So what do you mean then, DiNozzo?"

"What if… what if… no – wait… : IF… if Kate hadn't died that day. We had never-"

"So this is about her."

"What? I haven't said anything yet!" Tony looked confused.

"If Kate hadn't died that day, Ziva would still be in Israel. We would never got to know her."

"How did you know this was about Ziva?" Tony was still confused and disbanded.

Gibbs let out a small laugh and looked on his watch.

"Because she's gone now for almost three weeks and apparently it's high time for her to come back."

They stayed silent for a while. He knew it because he had thought about this too. Not only during his 'life-before-your-eyes'-experience but also because he had thought about it all again some time.

"We'll get her tomorrow when she lands at Dulles."

"Good. Problem solved?"

"No!"

"So?"

"We had met her again sooner or later. What do you think would it have been like meeting her in an interrogation room at the headquarters?"

_Her hair was wild and curly. She wasn't wearing any make up. Her skin was darker, her hair longer. She smelled like sand. Ziva sat straggle-legged on the chair, her handcuffed hands between her legs._

"_It's been quite a while Mrs. David…"_

"_Miss… David."_

"_I'm sorry. How comes such a pretty woman like you is not married."_

"_Men are often… intimidated when it comes to my job."_

"_You don't say!" he laughed and sat down._

"_So this is how Americans interrogate." She huffed, one of her curls falling into her face._

_She looked broken._

"_Is it so different from a Mossad-interrogation?" Tony grinned boyishly and put her thick file down on the table between them. _

_Ziva grinned and looked down to her hands. It was like a flash when she stood up within not even half of a second and put her cuffed hands around his neck, pulling his face close to hers looking him deep in the eyes._

"_I could kill you right now in this second, on this table, in this room. No one would hear."_

_Her eyes were empty. Like a shadow in a cold, dark night that you forget soon but haunts you every time you hear a noise._

"_Or I kill you, but I guess one would hear that."_

_She felt a gun pressing into her belly. He was good._

_Only then he recognized that they were only an inch apart, noses and lips almost touching._

"_Then do it." she challenged him. But he wasn't sure if it was only a challenge._

"_Ladies first."_

_Neither of them moved for the moment. They were not fighting this fight with words or guns, but with glares.  
_

"I don't remember staring her or someone else that deeply in the eyes."

"What happens after this?"

"Nothing. Its just a mind game."

"Is that the only "mind game" you have about her?"

"No, there is another one."

"And?"

"_Agent Todd, Agent Gibbs, Agent DiNozzo – Captain Ziva David, she will be your contact person and translator." introduced Officer Hamon them to each other. The woman before them looked strict in her uniform._

"_David as in Eli David? Gibbs asked and scrutinized her._

"_Yes, Sir." Ziva was small and thin. Her black hair was in a bun and she wore a military green uniform when she shook Gibbs hand._

"_I think we met before, Zee-vah?"_

"_Yes, Sir."_

"_How is your brother?"_

"_He is fine."_

_They were in a desert somewhere south of Jerusalem, that was all Tony and Kate knew. A marine had been found dead in his tent while working with the Mossad. The Camp was 'populated' with both Officers of the Mossad and marines. The Captain was no living here, Tony could tell that from the way she stood, smelled and looked like._

"_Why is a Mossad Captain working together with the NCIS on a case of a dead marine?"Gibbs asked her again._

"_Orders." was her short answer before she also shook Kate's hand and then Tony's. He held on to her for one more second, long enough though for her to look him in the eyes. She was so young and small. She was thinner than the last time he had seen her._

"_Agent DiNozzo?" her face relaxed for a moment and her mouth stayed open just a little bit. She was confused. And so beautiful. _

"_It's been a while." He smiled and for just a blink he thought he saw he smile too._

_She looked down, and when he lifted her gaze again nodded and he saw the smile again._

"_Yah. I guess so."_

_It was a strange encounter, there in the middle of the desert. Sweet maybe, weird in every case, sad without a question, because in this moment…_

"… I usually see all the things we've been through together in my mind before I come back to her… and wonder where all thiscomes from and if I've ever met her again aside form our encounter in Washington when we were hunting her brother."

Tony looked at him - sad and thoughtful.

Gibbs grinned silently for a moment.

"Before Ziva left three weeks ago, she sat in the same spot you're sitting now."

"She did?"

"Oh yah." Gibbs took another sip from his bourbon. "She thanked me."

"For what?"

"Asked her too."

"And?"

"She told me I had saved her life. We all had, Jenny had, Tim had, Abby had, Ducky had… you had."

Tony picked up the photographs before him again and looked at it carefully.

"You love 'er, don't you?"

Silent conquered the room one more time that night. Rain started again.

"The last thing I thought about is not a dream… but a day-mare."

He made a pause and placed the photograph openly on the table. It was a black and white picture of Ziva in Paris.

"It's sitting next to you and her father in the first row of her wedding with Ray. She's wearing that pretty white dress and just as the priest or rabbi or whatever he is asks Ray if he wants to marry her, I steal her a moment. We are staring at each other again with no expression in our faces and I feel… that this is the most horrible day in my life and that I have to do something against it. But I don't. The moment carries on forever."

"You didn't answer my question."

"You're seriously asking? She is my best friend, my partner- Of course I do. I'm going crazy when she's not around for even a day. And three weeks in Israel? This is a massacre."

First time that evening he took a sip from the bourbon Gibbs had offered him.

"And now you are here asking me for permission?"

"Well- no that wasn't why I came here - I came to talk and- well I guess now I do."

"Does she know?"

"No. She has no idea."

"You should tell her."

Tony looked at his boss as Gibbs was standing up and stretching his fingers.

"And now get out of my basement it's late."

"Wait- no- Gibbs- 'You should tell her'? Seriously? I mean what about all those years of acting on Rule 12 and now you just want me to tell her."

"Do you want me to fire you if you tell her?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Then get home, I'm tired and my floor upstairs is wet."

Gibbs laughed and sent Tony upstairs to call a cab. He had seriously walked all the way to his house to 'get some fresh air'.  
Gibbs waited until the cab came and Tony had disappeared in it. He seemed to be nervous and happy both the same time.  
he would get Ziva at 7.30 am.

What if? What if Kate hadn't died that day? Would it have worked out just as he had it in minds form his near death experience? Tony and her together as a family? Would someone else have died that day? Would Ziva died on a mission instead? Or maybe because of the way she lived? Her father? Ari? Mourning her little sister? He remembered the smile Ziva wore to work every morning. Would she ever have shown such an honest smile in Israel when going to work? Or would the wind have blown it away every day when she left her apartment to kill someone?

He moaned as he turned off the lights.  
Enough 'what ifs' for today – there were more important things to take care of.

He had to work out an explanation why he had remitted his twelfth rule.

* * *

There we are, thank you for reading!  
Btw.: I didn't get into the program, but by now I'm just super thankful. It would have been a lot of stress and buys days.  
September 25 is due date!I'm so excited! We're gonna ahve a sleepover party at my room and wait until we can watch it live on stream (I'm in the Netherlands - so this sucks xD)  
But however I hope you liked it ;) Leave a review~  
Magnolie


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